Scarlet Dreams
by Sionnain
Summary: Kowalski tries to do something nice for Ray, which involves buying the world's ugliest bedsheets. Domestic!K/V fic.


**Scarlet Dreams**

"So, what do you think?"

Ray Vecchio stood in the doorway to his bedroom, staring. "Um," he said, because there was really nothing else he could find to say. Ray wondered if this was going to be the entirety of his life with Kowalski--unable to answer simple questions because the bizarreness of the situation took all the words right out of his mouth.

Case in point--Kowalski was lying on their bed in a pair of black boxer-briefs (which meant one of two things: he was trying to be sexy, or his regular cotton boxers were in the laundry. Ray was betting on the second), his glasses and no shirt, leaning on his elbows in a way that made him look sluttish and kind of oddly adorable at the same time. Which, okay, Ray didn't mind that at all, the sluttishness _or_ the oddly adorable, but Kowalski was reclining on sheets that were so shiny it almost hurt to look at them, and the color...

Frannie tried to leave the house in high school in a dress that color, once. Their ma had yelled that no daughter of _hers_ was going to be out walking in a dress the color of a whore's red lipstick, and Frannie had been forced to change into something else. The dress was the _exact same color_ of the shiny, shiny sheets upon which Kowalski was lying.

"What--where did you get those?" Ray said finally, rubbing a hand over the back of his head. "And--actually, you know, never mind _where_--_why_ did you get them?"

Kowalski sat up, scowling. He looked so ridiculous, sitting cross-legged in boxer-briefs with his hair spiked up and his glasses on that Ray almost started to laugh. "You _said_ you wanted silk sheets. For your back? I was trying to be _nice_, you asshole."

And Ray felt bad, because he immediately realized what Kowalski had done, and why. A few weeks ago, Ray had taken the business end of a knife thanks to a doped-up car thief, leaving him with a shallow-but-wide wound on his back. Kowalski had ranted and yelled at him about it, but Ray understood that--hey, he was a cop, and he'd been married to one, too. This kind of shit went with the job, and it sucked, and he knew there was fear behind Kowalski's bluster and so he just let Kowalski yell at him for thirty minutes (a record, for Kowalski's attention span) and finally said, "I'm fine, Stanley. I'm _fine_," holding Kowalski's face in his hands while he said it.

Kowalski had stared at him, looking for a minute like a lost little boy, and then he'd grinned at Ray and said, "At least you're gonna have a hell of a scar, sweetheart," using his Humphrey Bogart voice for the endearment and waggling his eyebrows, which meant that, okay, Kowalski was done freaking out and had gone right back to being a weirdo. Ray had healed up fine (and Kowalski _was_ a bit fond of the scar, the freak) but Ray had complained off-hand to Kowalski that shirts that weren't silk made the scar on his back itch, and had made some comment about how nice it would be to have silk sheets.

Kowalski had actually snorted and said, "Our princess is in another castle, Vecchio," and cracked himself up, as if _Super Mario Brothers_ jokes were the height of funny. Too much time at _The One Liner_, clearly.

Apparently Kowlaski had remembered that conversation, because there he was, lying on sheets that were so shiny they could probably be used as safety flares to flag down rescue planes in the event of an emergency. Boy, they'd be surprised to find two guys nearing forty instead of a house full of hookers, wouldn't they? And while Ray was touched--he really was--by Kowalski's gesture, he was also kind of amused that his boyfriend had completely confused _silk_ with _satin_.

"Uh, Kowalski?" Ray said, stepping in the room. The late-afternoon sun was shining in the window, making the bed look like it was on fire. He almost had to shield his _eyes_, the damn things were so bright.

"Yeah?" Kowalski was giving him a skeptical look behind his glasses.

"You--I'm not saying this isn't nice because it is, okay--but you got satin sheets. Not silk."

Kowalski looked down, rubbed his hand over the red fabric. "There's a difference?"

Ray went to his dresser and opened his drawer, finding a pair of silk boxers and tossing them over to Kowalski. "See? Not quite so--" _red_--"shiny," he finished, trying really hard not to laugh as Kowalski rubbed the fabric of his boxers between his fingers and then compared it to the bedsheets, looking so very _serious_ that Ray almost wanted to jump him right there.

"Oh. Yeah, you know, I got these at Kohl's, and boy, did that lady at the check-out look at me funny." Kowalski tossed Ray's boxers on the floor (which was apparently where Kowalski thought all clothes should end up) and grinned up at him. "I didn't say they were--whaddyacallit--medicinal. Probably she thought I was getting them for a girl."

"Yeah, about twelve of them," Ray said with a snort.

"Look, are these gonna work or not? 'Cause I can get new ones, I just...what are we going to do with these? If we gotta get rid of them. Guess we could be really flashy ghosts for Halloween."

Ray went over and sat next to Kowalski on the bed, patting Kowalski on the knee. "They're fine, Stanley. Just maybe a bit...the color--"

"_Scarlet Dreams_."

"What?" Ray asked with a laugh. "Seriously? That's one way of putting it, I guess. I might've gone for _Harlot_ Dreams--"

Kowalski glared at him, but it only lasted for a second before he started grinning. "The other color they had on clearance was _Blissful Amethyst_."

"Christ, I don't know what's _worse_. Can an amethyst be blissful?" He bumped his shoulder into Kowalski's.

Kowalski bumped back, his smile sly. "Dunno. Can a dream be scarlet?"

"Kowalski, I think anything you dream in those sheets is gonna be red just from the glare." Ray grinned and leaned over to kiss him, and it started off playful but Kowalski was right _there_, all mostly-naked and wearing his _glasses_ and he'd really done something very sweet, and just imaging Kowalski sifting through packages of clearance sheets on a table and muttering, flipping them over to read the terrible names on the back...well, there were a lot of things about Kowalski that Ray really loved, but stuff like that was at the top of the _list_. Kowalski opened his mouth and Ray pushed on his shoulders so Kowalski went backwards, deepening the kiss, but when Ray tried to shift and move on top of him they got a little tangled up and...

The world tilted strangely in a blur of limbs and red satin and Kowalski's hair as they slid off the bed, landing with Kowalski on his back. Ray caught himself with his wrists and winced, looking down at Kowalski beneath him. "The other problem with satin sheets."

"This has happened to you before?" Kowalski scowled at Ray, glasses askew, shoving at his shoulders. "Oof. Move it. If your knee had hit me a little to the left, you'd have to make do with your hand for the evening."

Ray moved aside, laughing, and fixed Kowalski's glasses as he disentangled himself. "Maybe we should take them off. Don't think you can take them back after they're...y'know. Used."

"I can't take them _back_, Vecchio. They were on _clearance_." Kowalski stood up, pulling the sheets off the bed, the fabric moving through his hands in a slippery fall of garish satin. "Maybe I can get store credit or something."

"Let's keep them in case of a fire," Ray said, helping Kowalski pull the sheets off the bed. "Then again, maybe not. We'd probably fall to our deaths if we tried to use them as a ladder. We can put them on the guest bed from when Fraser comes to visit. He'll be too polite to ever mention it, it'll be funny." He didn't actually _want_ to keep them, but while watching Kowalski trying to fold the sheets correctly to get them back in the packaging would be amusing, Ray had plans for the afternoon that didn't actually involve Kowalski having a rage blackout, so...

They managed to get the sheets off the bed, and Kowalski said, "Hey, it's just the mattress pad--that's not gonna feel good, is it? On your back, I mean."

Ray grinned. "Who said I was gonna be on my back, baby?"

Kowalski just grinned at him, and Ray reached out and took off Kowalski's glasses, putting them carefully on the nightstand.

* * *

A few weeks later, Ray returned from court to find his silk boxers sitting on the table with Kowalski's wallet (yet another one of those moments when Ray really, really didn't want to know) and a new set of sheets on the bed.

Kowalski was not reclining like a _Playgirl_ spread on the sheets, and was instead in the shower. Ray could hear the water running, and hear Kowalski's terrible rendition of Billy Joel's _My Life_ echoing off the walls of the bathroom. Ray tossed his suit jacket on the bed and went into the bathroom.

"What color was it this time? _Bedazzling Blue_? _Luscious Azure?_ _Nocturne Navy?_" Ray leaned casually against the wall next to the shower.

"Ha, ha." Kowalski stuck his head out of the shower. "Dunno. I went to that fancy shop by North Lake Shore. _Beds Baths and Boredom_, or something. They had a whole bunch so I picked out some blue ones. But they're actually silk this time, I checked."

Ray laughed at that. "Yeah? You're sure?"

"Uh-huh." Kowalski grinned at him, blinding and bright, the smile that always made Vecchio grin back at him even when Kowalski was being an ass or throwing pencils at him from across the desk. "I took your boxers with me so I could show 'em and be sure to get the right ones."

Well, that explained it, then. "The guy think you were crazy?" Ray asked, shaking his head. All of this effort for such a small thing. He was absurdly touched, even if the thought of Kowalski presenting his underwear to complete strangers was kind of horrifying.

"Nah." Kowalski reached out, tugging on Vecchio's tie to bring him closer, which meant Ray was going to get all wet, but he didn't mind. "He was just sad they didn't have any sheets with paisley."


End file.
